Tomorrow we’ll be continuing our Shackled City campaign. I’ve tried my Tiroler Cake twice and it was awesome. It is now 1:33 in the morning and I’ve decided to bake a third one for my D&D buddies. They deserve it.

I really need to learn the English cookbook jargon. In German there are very specific phrases to use for the various steps. If you can fix the recipe, please do.

Ingredients

Notes

125g (½ cup) butter at room temperature

At room temperature it’ll be easy to mix with the egg yolks!

4 egg yolks

We need the egg whites, don’t throw them away.

a dash of salt

Beat until light yellow and foamy.

200g (⅔ cup) sugar

120g (1 cup) flour

200g (1-⅔ cup) ground hazelnuts

Add to the yolks and butter.

50g (⅓ cup) whole hazelnuts

Coarsely grind them yourself. Texture is important so don’t overdo it.

½ pack of baking powder

If you don’t buy it in packs of around 16g, just use a teaspoon of baking powder. The cake is not supposed to be fluffy! Mix with the dough. This is when you use your hands to really get into it…

150g (5 ounces) good dark chocolate

I like Crémant by Cailler; “cocoa solids: 46% minimum”; buy cheap chocolate and you deserve a cheap cake. Break it into little pieces and add to the dough.

4 egg whites

Beat until “stiff but not dry” and carefully fold into the dough you already have. This looks tricky, but it’s easy.

Pour into a baking pan that you greased with some butter. Don’t forget that it will rise, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to fill the pan.

The entire thing should have taken you half an hour, including doing the dishes.

Bake at the bottom of your oven, 180°C, for anything between 30 and 60 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. In my oven it’s around half an hour.

For the moment, however, I’ve just baked my fourth one. It’s something I enjoy doing: Mastering a particular recipe. Just do it again and again, experimenting with the ingredients. Out of hazelnuts? Use almonds for the rest. Like the chocolate? Use 200g chocolate. And so on. The three previous cakes have been excellent, by the way.

I finally got around to trying this. Besides burning it – I checked after a half-hour and it was too late, I’m not sure the hazelnut consistency was correct. In this hemisphere, using hazelnut in cooking is only for purposes of a special treat. The supermarket only had chopped hazelnuts distributed by a U.S. corporation. What should the consistency of “ground hazelnuts” be? More than just “chopped”, eh? Perhaps you could post a picture of your ground hazelnuts?